CHAPTER 33: ILLUMINATING ARTIFACTS

  Saint Albus was a yellow-dotted sight in the distance long before The Sapphire Spirit finally descended and made port in the solitary city. Wooden docks extended over the icy ocean water that bordered the settlement, some low enough for sea-faring vessels, others built higher and more recently for airships. They had no trouble finding space. Floating Icebergs—large enough to tear through a hull and sink an unlucky ship—inched by a mile offshore.

  No one welcomed their arrival nor demanded a docking fee, though their presence did not go unnoticed. Their clothing, while hardly regal by the standards of Sailor’s Rise, exposed them as obvious outsiders. Their attire was too adorned, too buttoned up, too layered. Northerners were known for being unapologetically practical in both business and appearances. Elias often felt underdressed whenever visiting Azir and Sultan Atakan’s courtly palace, but up here, amid bearded men and un-made-up women trudging through the hardened mud in their faded hides and crusted furs, he instead felt uncomfortably genteel.

  If Saint Albus were a dining room table—one no doubt set with unpretentious yet hearty foods and ales—the center of town would have been its illuminating chandelier. A massive brazier burning with crackling flames, the tallest of them licking the gray sky above the plaza’s encircling buildings, was a beacon from a distance and a generous fireplace for anyone passing through the city’s busiest intersection. Elias had already seen the monolithic fire from the sky, miles before their approach.

  They stood before the iron rim of it now, warming their splayed hands, working through what to do next. It was Jalander’s business they were here for, but they were free to do as they wished as he conducted it.

  “I could use some assistance,” their client said. “Elias, would you mind joining me?”

  Elias, of course, nodded without hesitation. He still knew little about the ancient artifact that had brought them here, why the Valshynar wanted it, and where it was ultimately destined, assuming Jalander successfully acquired it. “Sure,” he said, slowing his nods, masking his enthusiasm.

  “Perhaps Briley and I should grab a drink,” Bertrand said, “see if we can dig up new business.”

  “Is that your reason for swigging back mead, Bertrand: business development?” Elias smirked.

  “Liquor loosens tongues and makes friends out of strangers,” Bertrand replied, “and I’m sick of standing out in the cold.”

  Briley shrugged. “I could drink.”

  “Shall we?” Jalander stepped back from the fire and gestured onward. “As for you two, Elias and I will meet you back here at sunset.”

  More nods but no words were exchanged as their party of four split into equal halves. Departing northward, away from the great flame and familiar company, Elias had absolutely no idea where Jalander was taking him. Toward another mystery, perhaps? Was he headed down another serpent’s path?

  * * *

  Saint Albus was hardly known for its stately residences, but they had evidently found the single exception to that rule. The three-story stone mansion was a floor taller than most buildings in the city, and it might have looked more suited to Sailor’s Rise, except that up here—rising from the tundra rather than sticking out of a mountain—the impressive house had room to breathe.

  Jalander led them through a creaking iron gate and up a small stairway to the manor’s green front door. Vibrant colors were another rarity in the United North. As was landscaping, and in this case, money couldn’t buy everything. Nature simply did not barter with coin.

  Jalander raised a closed fist and knocked nothing but frigid air as the door was opened for him. A middle-aged man buttoned up like a couch cushion in his emerald frock coat (their host clearly had a favorite color) likewise introduced himself before they could manage a hello. “Bjorn Halvorson.” He had a thick northerner’s accent despite his taste for southerly fashions. “I have been twiddling my thumbs all day, eagerly awaiting your arrival. Jalander, was it?”

  “Pleased to—”

  “And who is this handsome young devil? Brought your assistant, I see.”

  “Something like that,” Jalander said.

  “Come in, come in. Come see what my men dug up two months ago. I suspect you will be quite smitten with this particular specimen.” He flashed a lingering glance at Elias as he beckoned them inside. “I have a sharp eye for these artifacts, you know,” he continued, finger waving, barely taking a breath. “There’s something almost—how to describe it—otherworldly about them. I sent a letter to your people straight away. I thought to myself: the Valshynar would want to see this, and here you are.”

  “We appreciate your letter,” Jalander replied, “and your discretion.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Naturally. I am all about… discretion.”

  He led them into his backyard-facing living room, herding them toward fabric armchairs that looked either new or seldom used. They made themselves comfortable, but Bjorn could not stop fidgeting. He led a life of imports, after all, and they were both fascinating new arrivals.

  He also led a life of exports, as Jalander would later explain to Elias. Bjorn owned one of the United North’s largest mining companies, and this not only made him a rich man, but it also meant his workers occasionally discovered things during exploration and excavation. Things they hadn’t expected, the old earth revealing itself with an unexpected clang or a faint glimmer. Ever an astute if flamboyant businessman, Bjorn had quickly found the right client for these untraceable artifacts: the only culture he could think of that was as mysterious as the specimens themselves.

  “Bursting with excitement?” he asked them, unbuttoning and loosening his tight frock coat as he took his seat last.

  “Ready to explode,” Jalander said flatly.

  Elias only nodded, but his excitement was more palpable than his partner’s.

  Bjorn leaned forward, opening a drawer they could not see from the coffee table between them. He took out a cherry wood box, reveling in the reveal, and placed it down on the table. At last, he swiveled the box to face Jalander, snapped free its brass clasp, and lifted its lid ever so slowly, lest the magic inside somehow slip free.

  And there it was, the artifact they had crossed half the Great Continent to acquire: an open bracelet, centered like the moon in a sky of velvet lining.

  “Take a closer look,” Bjorn instructed them.

  Jalander reached into the box and retrieved the bracelet, pinching it between two fingers like a scientist peering into some bubbling vial.

  “You needn’t be so careful,” Bjorn added. “Tough as nails, that bracelet. Tougher, even. I don’t recognize the material myself—some sort of strange alloy—but it must be astonishingly resilient to have survived thousands of years in such remarkable condition.”

  Jalander slowly spun the ancient piece around and around, taking in its details from every angle. It was simple in most respects: largely unadorned, aside from a few markings Elias could not decipher. (Could Jalander, he wondered?) But there was a depth in its unassuming material, hues of purple half hidden beneath its silver surface like the red under a cheek. A depth that reminded Elias of relics, despite his old friends insisting he had been seeing things, constructing imaginary layers in his wishful head. But they were here in this bracelet too, those layers.

  “I was right, then,” Bjorn said for them. “I can tell from the expression on your face, my new friend. This artifact is of interest to the Valshynar.”

  Elias was curious as to what Bjorn knew about the Ancients. Most people—including Elias up until a year and a half ago—believed the Great Continent had been forged for them by gods or happenstance, depending on which culture you asked. Upon finally learning the surprising truth, he had first assumed that their ignorance, his ignorance, was merely the result of time weathering away history. Now he questioned if it was more deliberate, held back from them by those who knew better. Was Jalander here to collect a bracelet, or was he here to hide one?

  “I assume your employer informed you about the nature of our deal this time,” Bjorn said, pivoting to business matters. “I have it in writing if you would like to see.”

  “No need,” Jalander replied. “You’ll have your tour.”

  Bjorn smiled a satisfied smile. “I recognize how privileged this must sound, but at this point in my sad life, I am rather beyond money,” he explained. “I want to see things I haven’t seen before, feel things I haven’t felt, rare things, secret things, things few people will ever get to experience. Ask folk outside this door, and they’ll tell you a neat story about a world they know nothing about. Don’t let these clothes fool you, gentlemen. I am still a miner, and I know firsthand that the deeper you dig, the more layers you unearth. Money can only buy so much, but my curiosity is bottomless.”

  Before they could reply, Bjorn stood up from his chair, slapped his well-garmented thighs, and said, “I’ll give you two a moment with it while I fetch some tea. I sent my servant home for the day. Discretion, as we discussed. Excuse my manners: do you like tea?”

  “He loves tea,” Elias answered for them.

  “A man after my own heart,” Bjorn sighed wistfully as he ambled out of the room.

  “What’s this about a tour?” Elias inquired as soon as they were alone.

  “He wishes to visit the Gray Academy,” Jalander sort of clarified.

  “What and where the hell is the Gray Academy?”

  Jalander set the bracelet down on the marble coffee table with a look Elias had grown rather accustomed to. Every new chapter the Southlander revealed to his late friend’s son seemed to be prefaced by the same internal struggle—the son in question could see the conflict in his eyes once again—and yet, in the end, he acquiesced. “The Valshynar are a largely nomadic people, but we nonetheless have a place we call home, a de facto capital: the Gray Academy,” he explained. “It is where big decisions are made and artifacts like this one are stored. It is also where collectors can study and practice without fear of discovery. As for the where half of your question, you won’t find it, Elias. While the academy does indeed exist in this world, its location is practically unreachable, its walls fortified, its very image hidden.”

  “So, they travel there through sky rifts,” Elias surmised.

  Jalander neither confirmed nor denied the assumption, though he hardly had to. Alas, he could not ignore the younger man’s follow-up question: “Can I visit?”

  “I think you already know the answer to that.”

  “So, no.”

  “Correct.”

  “Do you know what the bracelet says?” Elias asked. “Can you read that language?”

  “I never learned to read Ancient,” Jalander said, “but there are scholars at the Gray Academy who should be able to decipher it.”

  Elias picked up the solid bracelet and ran his thumb along its foreign markings, along the grain of its impenetrable metal, feeling for answers. “What does it… do?”

  “It goes on your wrist.” Jalander grudgingly added, “They collect them at the academy. There’s a whole wing there, a museum of artifacts from the Pre-Cataclysm Era.”

  “That means this bracelet is more than five-thousand years old,” Elias said, trying to feel, along with everything else, the weight of that fact. “How long had the Ancients been around before they crafted this, I wonder? What existed five thousand years before them?"

  “I have no idea,” Jalander admitted. “I’m not sure anyone knows anymore. If they do, I doubt they’ll tell me.” He gave Elias a moment, letting him float freely on the deep waters of youthful epiphany, before eventually changing the subject: “When we’re done here, I want to take you somewhere.”

  Elias snapped out of it and turned to him, eyebrows furrowed.

  “Don’t worry,” Jalander said, “I’ll have you back with your friends by sunset.”